SNL: The 10 Best Sketches of the Past Season

During the regular TV season, I spend many a Sunday morning recapping the previous evening’s Saturday Night Live. With the show in hibernation till fall, I thought this weekend I’d take a trip down Recent Memory Lane and count down the 10 best sketches of Season 37. From a Kermit the Frog encounter to an all-star Weekend Update, here are my picks:

10. Arlene” (Oct. 1, 2011) | Melissa McCarthy as a frumpy office worker sexually harassing Jason Sudeikis’s mortified married man wasn’t the world’s freshest concept, but the guest host’s commitment to the comedic cause — and her outrageous use of a horse balloon — had me howling in spite of myself.

8. Get in the Cage (Feb. 11, 2012) | Honestly, I don’t know how the real Nicolas Cage managed to keep a straight face during a bit that explained the two-step formula for his most successful movies: “All the dialog is either whispered or screamed.” And “everything in the movie is on fire.” Amazing stuff.

7. Bein’ Quirky With Zooey Deschanel (Feb. 11, 2012) | The actual Deschanel proved her gameness as a host by playing opposite Abby Elliott’s version of herself — a wide-eyed, twee actress extolling the virtues of Blossom, yarn (which got a genius one-word theme song), and bringing home garbage. Deschanel’s Mary Kate Olsen blew in on a breeze to make a cozy for her Starbucks cup, but Taran Killam’s Cera (a giggling, mealy-mouthed delight) and Kristen Wiig’s Bjork (“if you like screaming, make it music!”) scored plenty of laughs, too.

5. James Carville on Weekend Update (March 3, 2012) | Marvel at Bill Hader’s scathingly funny and wonderfully absurdist take on the Democratic political adviser. I laughed from the beginning (Carville’s childhood game of The Patchelor featuring a bunch of kids hoping to marry a gussied-up watermelon) to that amazingly insane tale of luring Newt Gingrich into an affair with a personal ad (“I love it when a guy is just a big blob of gray”), dressing up as a woman, taking him for a Paddleboat ride, and then shocking him with a reveal of his “Harry Connick Jr.” (which looks exactly like Carville’s face — without glasses).

4. Kim’s Fairytale Divorce (Nov. 5, 2011) | Everything you hate about the Kardashians, but in a form designed to make you roar with laughter, instead of vomit in agony. (Apologies to Bruce Jenner’s face included.)

3. Bronx Beat (Feb. 18, 2012) | Amy Poehler joined guest host and fellow SNL alum Maya Rudolph for a brilliant revival of gum-snapping talk hosts Betty and Jodi, dishing everything from Jennifer Lopez’s young new beau (“why don’t you smoke a doobie spliff with your hip-hop boy-toy?”) to their own sex lives to episodes of Hoarders (where people find “open cans of Dinty Moore beef stew under a blanket of adult diapers”). The insanity got cranked up to 11 when Andy Samberg and a “hirsute” Timberlake went from camera guy and boom operator to Betty and Jodi’s amorous guests.

2. Stefon (Dec. 10, 2011) | I could barely breathe during the season’s best Stefon, from the punch line about a bulldog who looks like Wilford Brimley (“the password is dia-beatus”) to Menorah the Explorer and all the way to that genius/random mention of a CVS employee (“don’t bother her, because she is on break!”). Bonus: Hader almost losing it on the second mention of “Spud Webb.”

1. Weekend Update Joke-Off (Dec. 17, 2011) | In a stroke of comic genius, Poehler, Tina Fey, and guest host Jimmy Fallon got behind the anchor’s desk with Seth Meyers and lobbed punch line after punch line about a strip club offering free lap dances to patrons who donate gifts for needy children. (The buzzer sound-effects were pretty amazing, too.) SNL should be required to wrangle guests for a joke-off every single week, no? My personal fave (from Fallon): “Unlike the strippers, the toys must not be damaged.”

What were your favorite sketches from SNL‘s latest season? Did I miss any of your personal picks? Or did I include anything that made you roll your eyes? Sound off in the comments!

Jimmy Fallon as Beethoven directing an orchestra playing “Ode-Da-Joyyy,” the disco version. The introductions were hilarious. “Next I’d like to introduce the brass section. I call them the brassholes.”

I enjoyed your selections, It’s a matter of taste as to what is funny to some, and not funny to others. I’m one of those old school SNL fans from the shows rookie year, I can still remember falling down laughing at some of the stuff from those shows.

Interesting that none of Kristen Wiig’s recurring characters are on this list. In fact, she only had a small part in one of your top ten for the season. And she is supposedly one of the best female cast members ever?

No one mentioned the Mick Jagger episode??? I laughed til I cried!!! From the monologue til Kristen Wiig’s farewell dance. Jagger even sang a politically comedic song… Don’t let Mitt Romney cut your hair!!!!! I agreed with five of your Top 10 picks. Wish they would show more of Jay Pharoah. He is phenomenal.

I shouldn’t be surprised that a TV critic would go 2-for-10 in picking the best sketches. How could you overlook “Newt Gingrich, Moon President”? “Who’s On Top?” from the Baldwin show? “Tell Him” with Anna Faris? Taran’s Limbaugh cold open? Jonah Hill’s monologue? Seriously.

Notice that 50% of these sketches came from Weekend Update? It is literally (or littrally – as Rob Lowe would say) the BEST thing about SNL the past few seasons. I would love it if they made SNL 1 hour and extended Weekend Update, maybe the show would be worth watching again.